The Air Force Officer Corps in the 1980s

receding professionalism

Lieutenant Colonel Donald R. Baucom

The support people are not interested in providing support to
operations. . . . They cant identify with the airplanes on the base. . . . Most
people outside operations see the airplanes as just getting in the way They are a
nuisance.1

Todays peacetime Air Force is a large,
incredibly complex organization with an officer corps of nearly 102,000. These officers
are divided among 217 occupational specialties that are themselves based on 60 different
academic disciplines.

Given this diversity, it is not surprising that three recent studies
present evidence indicating a weakness in the unity and sense of purpose of the officer
corps. Captain Frank Wood reported in 1980 that younger officers think service in the
support areas is more rewarding and has greater prestige than service in the operational
portion of the Air Force.2 More recent reports on officer professionalism by
Major C. Anne Bonen and Captain James H. Slagle indicate that substantially more than half
of the officers in todays Air Force identify more closely with their career fields
than with the officer corps.3

What is the significance of this situation? I believe it signals a
possible recession of professionalism in the present Air Force officer corps. I develop
this thesis by first arguing that Samuel P. Huntingtons The Soldier and the
State still constitutes a valid perspective from which to view current professional
developments.4 Huntingtons views, combined with Philip Abramss
article on recession of military professionalism in England, lead me to believe that
officer professionalism may be in a recession in todays Air Force.5

The Continuing Relevance of
Huntingtons Soldier and the State

When evaluating events, one must always have some standard, some
perspective by which to judge. Professor Huntingtons classic study on military
professionalism offers an excellent perspective from which to evaluate this current
situation despite recent criticism by Major Bonen. She questions the continuing validity
of Huntingtons study on two grounds: it is not based on data collection and is
Army-oriented.6 Her position seems untenable to me.

Granted, one cannot survey the dead, but what then are we to do with
history? Are we to deny the value and relevance of past human experience simply because
historical studies cannot be based on opinion polls? Attitudes and values are expressed in
the writings of the past and can be developed in historical studies. No thoughtful person
can review the documentation of The Soldier and the State and fail to be
impressed by the material Huntington reviewed while preparing his study. Surely, there is
some degree of validity in a study supported by such massive scholarship, even if the
study was completed in 1957.

What about Bonens criticism that the study is Army-oriented? Does
this matter? The U.S. Air Force did not exist until 1947, and the Army was its
predecessor. The fathers of the Air Force Arnold, Spaatz, Eaker, Vandenberg,
Twining, White, LeMay, et al.were products of the interwar Army, and all but Eaker
and LeMay were West Point graduates. Furthermore, many of the top leaders of the
post-Vietnam Air ForceGenerals George Brown, Bryce Poe, Lew and James R. Allen,
Charles A. Gabriel, and Bennie Davis, to name but a feware also West Point
graduates. The single most widely known and often-used statement of our professional creed
is the West Point motto: Duty, Honor, Country. Does one improve his understanding of
professionalism by denying his heritage, his past? The roots of Air Force professionalism
pass through the Army from the plain at West Point!

Given the significance of our professional heritage and the sound
scholarship of The Soldier and the State, I think it safe to say that
Huntingtons book offers quite an important perspective from which to view
developments in todays Air Force officer corps. Let us now look briefly at what
Huntington wrote in 1957, for there is more to his thesis on military professionalism than
the oft-repeated words: corporateness, expertise, and responsibility.

The Soldier and the State is probably the single most
important book from the standpoint of legitimizing the militarys claim to
professional status. Its major thesis is that "the modern officer corps is a
professional body and the modern military officer a professional man." To prove his
thesis, Huntington developed his famous model of professionalism and showed how it applied
to the military. The military is a profession because it exhibits the same
characteristicsexpertise, corporateness, and responsibilitythat the principal
civil professions exhibit.7

While Huntington does define each of the characteristics of professions
early in his book, we gain a fuller understanding of the meaning of expertise and
corporateness when he sets about describing the process through which the American officer
corps became professionalized, a process that occurred in the nineteenth century. There
were two major facets in this process: establishing the "conduct of war" as the
focus of military expertise and the development of a corporate identity in the officer
corps. These two facets are intimately related.

Prior to the Civil War, the good officer was one considered competent
in some "technical skill such as civil engineering, ship design, cartography, or
hydrography." Officers were not trained in a military skill that they shared with
other officers. As a result, the officer corps tended to be divided into subgroups that
were "likely to be more closely tied with a segment of civilian society than with
other segments of the corps."8

In the years following the Civil War, line officers in the Army and
Navy increasingly emphasized that the conduct of war should be the center of the
militarys professional interest. The articulation of this viewpoint was a major step
toward the development of the militarys conception of itself as a "learned
profession in the same sense as law and medicine" but without a counterpart in the
civilian world.9

Thus, the professionalization of the American officer corps occurred
when Army and Navy officers recognized that the focus of their professional expertise is
the art and science of war. This focus served as a central theme, uniting specialists and
line officers into a single corporate group, the professional officer corps.

Receding Professionalism

I have read many discussions of Huntingtons work by military officers and have
discussed it with many other officers. All of these officers focus their attention on
Huntingtons static model of professionalism: corporate ness, expertise, and
responsibility. Either they have not read all of Huntington or choose to ignore the more
dynamic portion of his thesis, the process by which the American officer corps achieved
professional status. Recognizing that there was a chain of events leading to the
achievement of professional status is important, for it permits one to understand that
having achieved professional status does not guarantee that an organization will continue
to maintain that exalted status.

When viewed from the perspective of the Huntington professionalization
process, the situation described earlier in this article becomes a cause for concern.
Todays Air Force officer corps seems to be regressing to the preprofessional status
that prevailed in the American officer corps during the first half of the nineteenth
century. A majority of Air Force officers already identify primarily with others in their
own career fields. Furthermore, the quotation at the beginning of this article, plus other
signs of misunderstanding evident in the Wood paper, indicate that confusion exists about
the focus of officer expertise.

This view of the status of professionalism in the Air Force is
reinforced by Philip Abramss 1965 article on the recession of professionalism in the
British Army. According to Abrams, the recession of professionalism is marked by these
characteristics:

the loss over time of its monopoly of the knowledge relevant to the
performance of a particular service; growing confusion as to the nature of the service the
group is expected to perform or the social devaluation of all the services it can perform;
growing dissensus among group members as to the normative implications of membership; an
internal and external denial of competence leading to a degeneration of
authority-relations within and a loss of access to decision-making affecting the group
throughout.10

On looking at the current defense milieu in the United States, one
finds an impressive array of specifics that fall into the categories of characteristics
outlined earlier.

One indication that the military no longer has a monopoly on relevant
professional knowledge can be seen in the area of strategy making. Since World War II,
"social scientists, economists, natural scientists, and mathematicians" have
increasingly dominated national security matters. Strategy making has become the work

of civilian experts with military men largely excluded from the
process.11

The existence of the "Reform" group is further evidence that
the military is no longer the exclusive possessor of professional military expertise. The
"Reformers," including congressmen, civilian analysts, and retired officers, are
currently challenging Department of Defense judgments on everything from the types of
weapons to buy to how to employ weapons on the battlefield.12

With regard to confusion about the service the military is to provide,
two things come readily to mind. One centers on the basic function of military forces.
Many officers agree with Bernard Brodies view of the use of military force in the
nuclear age. In 1946 Brodie wrote:

Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to
win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other
useful purpose.13

Other officers believe that Brodie was wrong and the military still
exists to fight the nations wars, such as the two wars the United States has fought
since 1946.

A second element of confusion regarding the militarys purpose is
government policies that authorize use of the military for nonmilitary purposes. Two
examples of such nonmilitary functions are combating drug traffic and training civilians
who cannot meet minimum military standards (Project 100,000).

Evidence of a dissensus with regard to "nornative implications of
membership" in the profession emerges from the Bonen, Slagle, and Wood articles. Some
support officers seem to view support activities as ends in themselves. No more than 48
percent of the officers between lieutenant and colonel can agree on what it means to be a
military professional. And fewer than 50 percent of the officers in the Air Force identify
primarily with the officer corps.

Finally, although I know of few internal criticisms of military
competence, there have been numerous charges of military incompetence from outside the
military. The words of Steven Canby are typical:

The study of war has all but atrophied in the U.S. The best minds in
the U.S. military have become managerial and technical experts; but they have not studied
their own professional discipline.14

In my view, the Air Force officer corps is regressing to a
preprofessional status because of a blurring of the focus of officer expertise and a
related decline in the officers sense of corporateness. There, are two basic ways of
responding to this situation.

One may simply define the problem away by saying that traditional
professionalism is outmoded and herald the beginning of a new era, the era of the
situational or pragmatic professional. But let us not deceive ourselves into believing
that nothing is lost in the process. There are certain characteristics essential to
organizations that would claim the title of profession. Among these are the concepts of
service and sacrifice. You simply cannot compromise where these characteristics are
concerned, for when you do they cease to exist. As Richard Gabriel puts it in his book
To Serve with Honor:

With regard to sacrifice, it is the basis of professionalism. The
military is sworn to serve the state and the society. This inevitably means that at some
point the members of the profession will have to pursue the interests of their client
instead of their own.15

A second approach is to recognize that something vital is being lost
and take action to remedy the situation. Since the situation is too complex to be dealt
with in so small a space, I would only offer a few tentative suggestions at this point.

First, one must recognize that not everyone who wears officer insignia
can be or even should be a "professional." Whereas our rank structure is a
pyramid sitting on its base, the professional structure should be thought of as an
inverted pyramid. Everyone in the grade of lieutenant colonel or above should show clear
signs of commitment to the officer corps and understand that the basic mission of the Air
Force is to " fly and fight," to use an old Air Force cliché. Thus, of the
nearly 102,000 officers in the Air Force, we would expect about 20,000 to "
hard-core" professionals.

Implied in the idea that professionalism should increase with time in
service is the idea that socialization is a process that goes through-out ones
career. But saying that socialization is a career-long process does not exempt the Air
Force from working to improve its socialization activities. More effort needs to be
expended in formal educational activities so that officers better understand the
professional prescriptions and proscriptions of officership. The lack of consensus among
officers as to the meaning of professionalism, as revealed in the Bonen article, is a
clear indication of a failure in socialization within the Air Force officer corps.

An important part of the expanded socialization activities would be an
emphasis on those aspects of officership that trancend occupational skill groups. These
would include the following:

The unlimited nature of the officers obligation to serve. Sir John Winthrop
Hackett has referred to this as the " unlimited liability clause" in the
officers "contract." All officers share to some degree the risk of death
in combat or combat support during time of war.

The ultimate purpose of the Air Force--to conduct successful aerial warfare in support
of national objectives. The legitimacy of ones wear of the Air Force uniform is
based on the support one gives to the accomplishment of this basic mission.

The heritage and traditions of the U.S. Air Force.

The Air Force uniform itself. It is a symbol of acceptance into the professional officer
corps. When an individual wears it, he says that he agrees to support and maintain the
standards of the corps.

The officers responsibility for maintaining standards of appearance, discipline,
and performance.

While there may be other elements of unity in the officer corps, these
are among the more obvious. Strong emphasis on these unifying threads could begin to
rebuild our sense of corporateness and restore focus to our professional expertise. In
this way, the Air Force might at least stop and possibly reverse the recession of
professionalism that is presently under way in the Air Force officer corps.

Major C. Anne Bones, "Professionalism from Lieutenant to Colonel," Air
University Review, January-February 1982, pp.102-06; Captain James H. Slagle,
"The Junior Officer of the 1980s: The Situational Professional," Air
University Review, November-December 1981, pp. 90-96.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Solider and the State: The Theory and Politics of
Civil-Military Relations (New York, 1957)

Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of Untied States Military
Strategy and Policy, in The Wars of the Untied States, edited by Louis Morton ( New
York, 1973), pp. 405-06; and Richard Pipes, " Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could
Fight and Win a Nuclear War," Air Force, September 1977, p. 58.

For a discussion of the "Reformers," their concerns and activities, see
Lieutenant Colonel Walter Kross, " Military Reform: Past and Present," Air
University Review, July-August 1981, pp. 101-08. For a recent exchange between an
officer and a "Reformer," See William S. Lind and Walter Kross, "More on
Maneuver to Win," Military Review, June 1982, pp. 75-77.

"Implications for Military Policy," in Bernard Brodie, editor, The
Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order ( New York, 1946), p. 76.

Richard Gabriel, To Serve with Honor: A Treatise on Military Ethics and the Way of
the Soldier (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1982), p. 159. See also pp. 58,
63, 77, 160.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author
cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do
not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the
United States Air Force or the Air University.